Alice Hamilton Quotes

There can be no intelligent control of the lead danger in industry unless it is based on the principle of keeping the air clear from dust and fumes.

It was also my experience at Hull-House that aroused my interest in industrial diseases.

Ask the widows and orphans of the thousands of men killed annually through the avarice of railroad corporations refusing to avail themselves of modern appliances in coupling and other improvements on their railroads. Inquire from the thousands of women and children whose husbands or fathers were suffocated or crushed in the mines through the rapacious greed of stockholders clamoring for more dividends.

In 1896 one out of every 11 steel workers would die on the job.

It is a reproach to our civilization that any class of American workmen, should in the pursuit of a necessary and useful vocation, be subjected to a peril of life and limb as great as that of a soldier in time of war.

We have a lot of meatpacking plants in the state of Kansas. We need that personal protection equipment so that those folks can continue to do their jobs and continue to feed the nation.

If you've been to China, you know there are over 100 cities in China, and the pollution levels are just horrific - 60,000 people a year die in Chinese factories and facilities because they don't have any safety regulations. It's a carnage; it's Dickensian.

There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few.

You should never wear a baseball cap when working in close quarters in the attic: You never see that beam above you!

Latinos are disproportionately more likely to be injured on the job than other ethnic groups.

I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions.

Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.

From the first I became convinced that what I must look for was lead dust and lead fumes, that men were poisoned by breathing poisoned air, not by handling their food with unwashed hands.

I would not wish to imply that most industrial accidents are due to intemperance. But, certainly, temperance has never failed to reduce their number.

The bottom line to this is, there are few doctors who have any expertise in chemical exposure.

In the past, two colleagues died each season. It was generally accepted this could happen.

All the legislation ever secured for the ventilation or safety of mines, factory or workshop is the result of the efforts of organized labor?

[Industrialists] maim and slaughter workers by thousands.

Whether we, as individuals, are motivated by simple humanity or by simple economics, we can no longer permit profits to be dependent upon an unsafe or unhealthy work site.

Disregard for workers' health protection is not what American industry is supposed to be about.

No pound of coal is worth getting hurt over.

I oppose increased black-lung benefits for miners, because ‘they chose to be miners.

The memory of the 146 people who lost their lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire stands as a reminder that legal protections and workplace safety standards were won through a long struggle for social justice and at great human cost.

OSHA was created to regulate jobs that cause injury or illness to workers. Increasingly, though, OSHA sees its purpose as improving the general welfare of working Americans, whether work itself is hazardous or not.

I am fully on board with the Wellness Policy. Even after being suspended by it, I'm fully on board with it. I think it's really keeping people healthy in general.